Indie Hackers
Est. 2016Before any community existed, Courtland Allen hand-collected ten founder interviews — and launched on those alone.
▶ INDIE HACKERS · 2016
INDIE HACKERS · 2026 ◀Drag the handle — Indie Hackers, 2016 → 2026.
“I spent three weeks collecting 10 or 11 interviews that everybody read and launched immediately.”— Courtland Allen, founder of Indie Hackers
The ugly part. There was no product, no forum, no software — just a simple no-code site. Courtland Allen spent three weeks personally emailing founders and writing up about ten interviews on how they actually made money, then launched with nothing but those.
What he shipped anyway. Hand-curated stories were the whole product — and exactly what indie founders wanted to read. The interviews spread, a community formed around them, and Stripe acquired Indie Hackers within a year of launch.
Now. The home of the build-in-public movement — a community and podcast where thousands of founders share exactly how their products make money.